CHAPTER II
THE DAY!
"When time lets slip one little perfect day,
O take it—for it may not come again."
When Pearl woke on the morning of March 1st, it was with a heart so light and happy it brought back the many Christmas mornings that lay scattered behind her like so many crimson roses, spilling their perfume on the shining road which led back to childhood. The sunshine that sifted through the white muslin curtains of the one small window, was rich and warm, as if summer had already come, and Pearl suddenly remembered that the sky had been overcast and heavy the day before, and the air stinging cold.
She went to the window, and looking out saw that that the clouds had all gone, leaving no trace in the unscarred sky. The sun was throwing long blue shadows over the fields, brightening the trees on the river bank, with a thin rinse of pale gold. Down in the ravine, the purple blue of the morning twilight was still hanging on the trees. The house was very quiet—there did not seem to be anyone stirring, either inside or out.
Pearl dressed herself hastily, humming a tune in happy excitement. Her whole being was charged with happiness—for the great day had come.
Coming down stairs on light feet, she threw a red sweater around her shoulders and went out the front door. In her great moments, Pearl craved the open sky and great blue distances, and on this day of all days, she wanted to breathe deep of its golden air. Somewhere she had read about air that tasted like old wine! And as she stood facing the early sun that had come up in a cloudless sky of deepest blue, she knew what was meant.
From the dull tomb of yesterday, with its cavern-like coldness and gloom, had come the resurrection of a new day, bright, blue, sparkling, cloudless, for March had slipped in quietly in the night, with a gentle breeze of wonderful softness, a quiet breeze, but one that knew its business, and long before daylight it had licked the hard edges of the drifts into icy blisters, and had purred its way into all sorts of forgotten corners where the snow lay thickest.
It went past Pearl's face now with velvety smoothness—patting her cheeks with a careless hand, like a loving friend who hurries by with no time for anything but this swift re-assurance. But Pearl knew that the wind and the sun and the crisp white snow, on which the sunbeams danced and sparkled, were her friends, and were throbbing with joy this morning, because it was her great day.
She went in at last, remembering that the children must be washed and fed for school, and found Danny's garter for him just in time to save him from the gulf of despair which threatened him. She made up the two tin pails of lunch with which her young brothers would beguile the noontide hour. She put a button on Mary's spat, in response to her request of "Aw, say Pearl, you do this—I can't eat and sew." The sudden change in the weather forced a change in the boys' foot-gear, and so there had to be a frenzied hunt for rubbers and boots to replace the frost-repelling but pervious moccasin.